i guess this is one of those things you can only say anonymously right cause like otherwise people would just be SO judgy about it and i kinda get it i really do my husband frank passed away back in april and umm yeah it was expected sort of he'd been sick for years you know the kind of slow decline where you're always kinda on edge always waiting for the other shoe to drop but also just in this routine of caretaking like changing his sheets getting his meds ready making sure he ate even when he didn't want to it was just what i did for like fifteen years probably more if you count when things really started going downhill it just felt like my JOB almost like a second shift after my real job at the office you know and everyone was so nice after he passed like REALLY nice flowers cards people bringing food which was nice at first but then it was like too much and i just wanted everyone to GO AWAY so i could just SIT there you know and for a while i just did that i just sat and watched tv or read sometimes i just stared at the wall it felt kinda blank like my brain was just empty which was weird cause i thought i'd be like so sad and crying all the time but i wasn't i just felt sort of quiet inside like a really really long quiet and then after a few weeks maybe a month i started to notice things like i could just decide to go to a movie whenever i wanted without checking if someone would be home with him or if i had to give him his evening dose and i started going to the grocery store on a saturday morning just cause i felt like it not cause we needed something specific and i'd linger in the aisles looking at stuff i never would have bought before like fancy cheeses or those expensive candles it felt umm almost light if that makes sense like i wasn't carrying something heavy all the time anymore and now it's like seven months later and i still kinda feel that way sometimes i even catch myself like humming a little tune when i'm making coffee or i'll just stay up late reading a book and not worry about being tired the next day cause i don't have to get up early to do anything for anyone else and i feel really guilty about it sometimes like i'm a bad person for feeling this way for feeling umm FREE is the only word i can think of but then other times i just think well what am i supposed to do now just be sad forever is that what people want me to do i don't know i really don't know